$27 million anti-evolution museum to open soon

Lexington Herald-Leader ^ | March 26, 2007 | Andy Mead

[DaveLoneRanger]

Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian, and lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

There were dinosaurs of every kind aboard Noah's ark. Some dinosaurs managed to hang around until just a few hundred years ago. The legend of St. George slaying the dragon? That probably was a dinosaur.

Exhibits showing all this and more will be at the Creation Museum, a $27 million religious showcase nearing completion in Northern Kentucky.

The museum, in Boone County near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, is being built by a non-profit group called Answers in Genesis. It is scheduled to open on Memorial Day. Museum and Northern Kentucky tourism officials are expecting it to be a boon to the region, bringing in at least 250,000 visitors in its first year.

It already is getting media attention. Newspapers and television stations from Europe, Asia and Australia have visited, and CNN was there Friday.

But mainstream scientists, who have dubbed it The Fred and Wilma Flintstone Museum, say the museum's message is just plain wrong.

The museum is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible: The world was created in six, 24-hour days, some time between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Humans appeared on Day 6, and they didn't evolve from anything.

Ken Ham, an Australian who is Answers in Genesis' $120,000-a-year founder and president, says the museum opening will be a significant event in Christendom.

"No one else has ever built a place where you can experience biblical history and merge it with the science," he said.

47 percent agree

But Eugenie Scott, a former University of Kentucky anthropologist who is director of the California-based National Center for Science Education, said the information provided in the museum "is not even close to standard science."

Scott visited the museum recently as part of a British Broadcasting Corp. radio program. Although she didn't get a tour, she saw enough to know that the museum will be professionally done. And, she says, that's worrisome.

"There are going to be students coming into the classroom and saying, 'I just went to this fancy museum and everything you're telling me is rubbish,' " Scott said.

Daniel Phelps of Lexington, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, says the museum will embarrass the state because of the "pseudoscientific-nutty things" it espouses, and because it portrays evolution as the path to ruin.

But the Rev. Bill Henard, senior pastor of Lexington's Porter Memorial Baptist Church, said that Sunday school classes and other groups from his church are likely to visit.

"I think people will enjoy ... being able to see a different side from what some scientific findings have shown," he said.

Henard said he believes in the literal story of creation, adding that "I think you would be surprised to know how many people hold to a young-Earth creation."

More than a century and a half after British naturalist Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, which suggested that life evolved over millions of years from one-cell organisms, quite a few people agree with Henard, pollsters say.

When the Gallup Poll asked people about their views on the subject last March, 47 percent of Americans polled said that God created humans pretty much in their present form some time in the last 10,000 years. That belief was strongest among those with less education, regular churchgoers, people 65 and older, and Republicans.

Recruiting dinosaurs

Like a natural history museum or an amusement park, the Creation Museum will use people's fascination with dinosaurs as a draw.

There will be 80 lifelike dinosaur models, some of which move their heads and tails and roar.

"The evolutionists use dinosaurs to promote their world view; we're going to use that to promote our world view," Answers in Genesis spokesman Mark Looy said.

More than 50 videos will be shown at the various exhibits, and a "special-effects" theater will have seats that shake as visitors are hit with tiny mists of water. The opening show features an animatronic young woman struggling with her belief in God, while two angels that she can't see are on the screen behind her. Ham describes it as the only part of the museum that is "lighthearted" and "edgy."

The museum has a planetarium. But its programs, unlike those at other planetariums, will say that the light from the stars we see did not take millions of years to get here.

There also is a reproduction of a portion of the Grand Canyon. The message there is that it was created very quickly, from the waters from Noah's flood. The fossils in rock layers there and in many other places around the world are of animals that drowned in the flood, the museum says.

Some of the exhibits would be the envy of any natural history museum.

There are, for example, 10,000 minerals from a collection that was donated to the museum, fossil dinosaur eggs from China that Ham says are worth $40,000, and a donated collection of dinosaur toys that has been valued at $50,000.

There also will be an exhibit suggesting that belief in evolution is the root of most of modern society's evils. It shows models of children leaving a church where the minister believes in evolution. Soon the girl is on the phone to Planned Parenthood, while the boy cruises the Internet for pornography sites.

The museum already has generated international publicity and criticism.

Comedian Bill Maher, who often mocks religion, came by last month. Looy said he snuck in for a half-hour interview with Ham, who didn't know who he was.

The museum and Answers in Genesis also are the unflattering subject of a chapter of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. The book, published last year, is by former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges.

Tom Caradonio, president of the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Commission, said the museum is expected to bring plenty of people to the region, including religious conventions.

Asked about the contention that the museum will embarrass the state, Caradonio noted that Lexington allows betting on horses at Keeneland Race Course, which some find objectionable.

"I learned a long time ago in this industry that if we had to make moral judgments, we would probably end up selling nothing," he said.

[DaveLoneRanger]

I have a few thoughts on this. First...

Ken Ham has REALLY porked up! Now, MAYBE they used a different lens to enhance the appearance, but I've seen him in person within the past couple of years. Can you say "billions of dead things buried in stomach layers laid down by acid...all adding to girth"?

Second, Eugenie Scott said

"There are going to be students coming into the classroom and saying, 'I just went to this fancy museum and everything you're telling me is rubbish.'"

I hate to break it to her, but she's behind the times. This already goes on.

[DaveLoneRanger]

You have been pinged because of your interest regarding news, debate and editorials pertaining to the Creation vs. Evolution debate - from the young-earth creationist perspective.
To to get on or off this list (currently the premier list for creation/evolution news!), freep-mail me:
Add me / Remove me

---

The past couple of times I've asked, I haven't gotten a high enough level of interest to inquire about any group rates, if any Freeper creationists (or shucks, evolutionists, if you can be nice...!) want to attend the Museum's grand opening on Memorial Day. I plan to be there, and like I say, if enough people are interested, maybe we could put together a creationist Freepers group! Anyone interested needs to let me know ASAP.

[DungeonMaster]

Place keeper for fireworks.

[Muttering Mike]

*sigh*

Makes one wonder if people who believe in this pine for the good ol' days when non-believers could be tortured or killed as heretics.

Complete and utter delusional thinking.

[clamper1797]

They should build this right next to the "Man is causing global warming museum"

[camle]

my guess is that this would do more harm than good - it will paint non-evolutionists as utopian crackpots (vegan T-rex's and adam & eve)

[the_devils_advocate_666]

$27 Million? And the best thing they can think to do is build a meuseum? What would Jesus do with $27 Million?

[trumandogz]

Anything I ever needed to know about the world I learned watching the Flintstones.

[free me]

Made me wonder if the article was from the Onion at first!

Unreal.

[cloud8]

This is a joke, right?

[bert]

One wonders if the door in this fundamentalist monument faces east towards Afganistan and the fundamentalist Taliban?

[celmak]

LOL! That's rich since Global warmist are all evos.

[celmak]

Buid a temple

[Non-Sequitur]

Anyone know what this means? What do creationists think about stars?

It means that the furthest star we see can be no more than 4000 to 6000 light years away. Otherwise the light would not have reached us yet.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

They'll probably pull in $20-25 million a year.

That's what Dr. Hovind said he was making.

[celmak]

Build a temple

[MBB1984]

The belief is that God made the light from such stars reach earth at its creation.

[DaveLoneRanger]

Sorry! People like this are completely rational human beings. What a bummer that the enemies of evolution aren't easier to defeat, huh?

[Timbo64]

I can't go to the museum Pa, I gotta' brush my front tooth!

[dmz]

They should build this right next to the "Man is causing global warming museum"
_________

Sorry, the "High Tension Lines Cause Cancer Museum" already has that spot reserved.

[celmak]

Unlike the Atheist pointing down toward hell, LOL!

[Artemis Webb]

Well it sure looks like they spared no expense.

It's dumb...but at least it looks cool.

[js1138]

The Distance to Supernova SN1987A and the Speed of Light

When supernova SN1987A exploded, its light soon struck a ring of gas some distance from the star and illuminated it. As viewed from Earth, the ring appeared around the supernova about a year after it exploded. Its angular size combined with the time it took for the ring to be illuminated after SN1987A was first observed allows a direct, trigonometric calculation of the distance to that supernova with an error of less than 5%.

Oddly enough, if we use the older Newtonian physics (which most creationists love because it allows them to play around with the speed of light) we find that a change in the speed of light does not affect our calculations of the distance to SN1987A! Gordon Davisson pointed out that interesting tidbit.

The distance is based on triangulation. The line from Earth to the supernova is one side of the triangle and the line from Earth to the edge of the ring is another leg. The third leg of this right triangle is the relatively short distance from the supernova to the edge of its ring. Since the ring lit up about a year after the supernova exploded, that means that a beam of light coming directly from the supernova reached us a year before the beam of light which was detoured via the ring. Let us assume that the distance of the ring from the supernova is really 1 unit and that light presently travels 1 unit per year.

If there had been no change in the speed of light since the supernova exploded, then the third leg of the triangle would be 1 unit in length, thus allowing the calculation of the distance by elementary trigonometry (three angles and one side are known). On the other hand, if the two light beams were originally traveling, say three units per year, the second beam would initially lag 1/3 of a year behind the first as that's how long it would take to do the ring detour. However, the distance that the second beam lags behind the first beam is the same as before. As both beams were traveling the same speed, the second beam fell behind the first by the length of the detour. Thus, by measuring the distance that the second beam lags behind the first, a distance which will not change when both light beams slow down together, we get the true distance from the supernova to its ring. The lag distance between the two beams, of course, is just their present velocity multiplied by the difference in their arrival times. With the true distance of the third leg of our triangle in hand, trigonometry gives us the correct distance from Earth to the supernova.

Consequently, supernova SN1987A is about 170,000 light-years from us (i.e. 997,800,000,000,000,000 miles) whether or not the speed of light has slowed down.

Source

[Paradox]

Personally, I think this is pathetic, BUT, I'd probably go for a visit, and I'd be nice too. I generally have great respect for the type of people that Creationists tend to be. No need to be an a$$hat around such fine folk.

[HaveHadEnough]

Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian...

Yes, lettuce leaves were much tougher back then, requiring carnivorous-type teeth.

While there is some debate on whether T Rex was a predator or a scavenger, I think everyone (or perhaps, as a result of this article, most everyone) agrees that they ate meat.

[LukeL]

I use to be a young earth creationist but have sense changed. There can only be two explanations for the evidence of an old earth to the young earth creationist.

1. The evidence and methods used are all wrong and the earth is indeed 6,000 years old. Parallax, radiometric dating, uniformitaranism etc. Are all wrong and give us false answers.

2. God created with the appearance of age therefore everything we see is really young even though it looks old. God put the stars millions of light years away but also made the light appear here instantaneously. The fossils and strata in the earth were all put there as well.

The best comparison to this is that when God created the animals and Adam and Eve he didn't create infants, but full grown adults. They were adults but were in fact 0 years old

[dmz]

Sorry! People like this are completely rational human beings.
__________

Dave - in all seriousness, I don't think I've ever met a "completely rational human being", evo or creationist, or anything else, for that matter.

We all take certain items on faith, in the absence of a reason to do so.

[GATOR NAVY]

What do creationists think about stars?

[El Cid]

Re: 2

Thanks for the invitation, however I don't plan on being in the Kentucky area any time soon. My inbred hillbilly line comes from the Arkansas/Missisippi/Carolina/Virginia/Maryland trail. None of them strayed as far north as Kentucky, so although the AiG museum sounds like a fun visit, I can't see making the special trip.
ICR has a museum down in the San Diego area. Kind of small, but it still gets the message across.

[OldGuard1]

Why'd you change? All of the mechanisms that you listed are based on each other. They just play around with the fudge factors to make the numbers match. Look at carbon dating, for example: there's an arbitarary fudge factor to account for the "changing rate of carbon entering the atmosphere from space". How do they get this? They get it from artifacts that they're trying to date! There's also dendrochronology, which means you've got half a million old logs, and because this one has a dent in this one side and this other one does too, we're going to say that those dents were from the same year, and "voila!" -- we've got a single line of trees going back for millenia.

If I had tried to pull the sort of stunts in my science classes back in high school that professionals do (and get published doing!), I'd have failed out. And rightfully so. You don't just guess that two things match, and you don't just make up fudge factors when your numbers don't work out.

[Cooking101]

"Makes one wonder if people who believe in this pine for the good ol' days when non-believers could be tortured or killed as heretics."

At least they didn't have to worry about the repression of Christians, like we see today. They also didn't have to worry about socialists, communists, pagans and pseudo-science moonbats pimping for Darwinism. So I say bring back the Inquisition, the first to be purged from our midst will be the ACLU and the islamofacists. Then abortion would go next, that horrendous secular slaughter of millions of infants. Homosexual 'marriage' would go next, along with the rest of their special rights. Then those "judges" who interpret the Constitution the way a pimp interprets females would get the ax. Where is Torqemada when you need him?

[OldGuard1]

Ha ha, very funny.

Apparently it's "Bash People Who Actually Believe That The Bible Is The Word Of God Day".

[EarthBound]

We were told we would be persecuted. By joining with Jesus we accepted to be humiliated and destroyed with Him.

[mgstarr]

[JWinNC]

I could sure think of better uses for the money and time and efforts.

The false competition between science and creation is a bore... and will always be so until the end.

jw

[Oztrich Boy]

and a donated collection of dinosaur toys that has been valued at $50,000.

Dinosaurs had toys. Who knew?

[LukeL]

Because the factors of which we can directly test can be applied to an old earth.

For example when observing ice cores near the poles when we look down 26 rings we see ash that matches the ash from Mt. St. Helen's. When we look down 1937 years we see ash from Pompeii. So if going down 2,000 rings matches with 2,000 years of recorded history, than it isn't a stretch to apply this to 100,000-200,000 years.

[Oliver Optic]

Ken Ham, an Australian who is Answers in Genesis' $120,000-a-year founder and president ...

Not sure I see the relevance of Ken's salary to this article ... it's not like it's outlandish or anything ... in fact it's peanuts for someone of his responsibility and visibility.

Strange.

[El Cid]

RE: 11

"its programs, unlike those at other planetariums, will say that the light from the stars we see did not take millions of years to get here."

Anyone know what this means? What do creationists think about stars?

Other than that they were made on the fourth day, I can't tell you very much about how God made them (other than that He 'spoke' them into existence).

Ideas vary, but no one knows. Each model has various pros and cons:
a) God created the light in transit;
b) The speed of light has changed since the Creation;
c) Time Dilation where time near the center of the universe (Earth) ran much slower than time on the perimeter of the universe. This also required that the original dimensions of the universe were fairly compact - and then spread out after wards (Scripture makes several references to God 'stretching out the heavens'). The net result being that stars at the perimeter of the universe could have taken billions of years to form, while only days were passing on the Earth.

The net result is that I don't know.
It is certainly man's privilege and duty to study God's Creation -- but I suspect the details to this answer will have to wait until we can ask the Creator Himself.
In the mean time I have more than enough mundane challenges to keep me occupied.

[USMMA_83]

I hate, absolutely hate these stupid threads. It's embarrassing that people believe this nonsense. Gosh, in this day and age...

[USMMA_83]

Your post just made me cry. All my tax money spent on education (yours) wasted...absolutely wasted.

[Teacher317]

Ideas vary, but no one knows. Each model has various pros and cons:

and yet you reject the most plausible explanation, which has more than enough ideas, theories, and evidence behind it, all of which fit neatly into every other idea, theory, and piece of evidence we have about a few zillion other scientific topics..

[highball]

This is a joke, right?

Yes, it is. But they do mean it.

[misterrob]

Tons of scientific evidence proven out vs what someone wrote in the bible....

If I have a brain then I go with the former.

[trebb]

I won't be back up in that area until June or so. It sounds like one could make a day trip and hit the Corvette museum on the same day.

I hope they do a good job instead of adding another nut-job piece to feed those who deny God His authorship of us.

[EarthBound]

Your post just made me cry. All my tax money spent on education (yours) wasted...absolutely wasted.

I can normally go quite awhile on these threads without getting my dander up. This post crossed the line. El Cid was only trying to explain what he thinks. I've got a degree and love astronomy and chemistry. But guess what? I'm still a Creationist!

Why can't God have done these things? What can't evolution be a part of His Designs? Open your mind up a little more.

[HaveHadEnough]

c) Time Dilation where time near the center of the universe (Earth)....

Do you really believe that the Earth is at or near the center of the universe?